Associated Press – June 11, 2007:
Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey.
What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.
A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?“
#28 – There is always a chance that an innocent person is convicted and executed. When that happens you who are citizens of that state/country will collectively be guilty of murder. Can you live with that?
Yes. Yes they can.
It’s truly staggering how casually the average person deny life to another. Alleged criminals and assorted wrongdoers are just abstractions, as are innocents.
To these people, the death of an innocent is just an unfortunate cost of doing business. If one innocent dies, its okay if 10 “bad people” are killed to smooth our outrage.
Its easy to sit in our middle class suburban living rooms watching the news of bad guys doing bad things in the bad part of town from safe and abstract lens of the media and secretly chant like Romans for the death of a stranger. These people are lulled into a false belief that only the guilty are punished and their anointed lives will never be turned inside out through a miscarriage of justice.
You have a greater risk of incarceration if you fall into a certain group, the not wealthy group. Justice, guilty, not guilty, and right and wrong are not the concerns of this society. Vaguely match a description within shouting distance of a crime and get arrested They don’t care if you committed the crime. They go for high score. Its a game. How many humans can we process through the system? How many can we feed the prison? How many can we kill?
This is the commerce of justice. This is the “culture of life” the great leader spoke of. This is America… Where we rationalize murder by institutionalizing it and stamping it with a government seal.
#26
No. I never said nor implied we should just kill any prisoners. I stated that imprisonment for life is just as bad as capital punishment and no more moral than a quick execution.
#32 – I think you are wrong.
Faced with life in prison or death, I’ll take not being dead every time. Nothing could possibly be worse than death.
Not killing me are far far far preferable to killing me.
#33.
Frankly, I do not believe you have any idea of what you speak. There are far worse fates than death. For example, are you suggesting that you would take living in torturing for the remainder of your days over a quick execution? I doubt it.
Okay, so you’re a person in some kind of passionate throes of recompense or revenge or whatever against someone who has done you wrong. So you point a gun at your perceived antagonist, but just before you pull the trigger, you say to yourself, “Uh-oh, I better not do this or they’ll kill me, too”.
Who knows, maybe the DP actually does work sometimes in that way. But does it include murder-suicides too? (such as we have been seeing all over the planet lately?)
Seems to me that it would be rather ineffective against those.
#34 – Living torture and life in prison are two different things… But you have know way of knowing what I know or think.
Dead is the end of life, and nothing is better than being alive and nothing is worse than not being alive any more. Or do you think there is some sort of afterlife, and that gives you the false sense that death is something other than the end?
I’ll gladly live in prison for my remaining days instead of being killed by the state. But thanks for your concern.
#36
> Living torture and life in prison are two different things
No. No they are the same thing. You simply have no idea as to the living conditions in maximum and super maximum security prisons. You are talking about punishment for life. Remember, we aren’t talking Paris-Hilton prison. We’re talking about 23 hours a day in confinement. Sound proof rooms. No human contact. For the majority of your life.
At the end of the day, any sort of permanent punishment with no reprieve is equally moral or amoral. I happen to be an atheist so I give no credence to the idea that there is an afterlife. Thus, it is all the more important for people to be able to live a fulfilling life now within certain bounds. People sentenced to punishment for life are kept alive but prevented from living.
I never suggested I have the answers, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that by sentencing someone to life imprisonment we are somehow taking the moral high ground. We aren’t. I accept that it is, on rare occasions, necessary to act in an apparent amoral fashion for the greater good. Punishing those that murder is clearly one of those instances, thus since the two permanent punishments are of equal morality or amorality, we should look to other advantages in determining which one is “superior.”
#37 – No. No they are the same thing. You simply have no idea as to the living conditions in maximum and super maximum security prisons.
Tell me your opinion all you like but fuck you if you want to tell me what I know. I grew up around a prison. My family is a law enforcement family. I know what I’m talking about. I’ll agree to disagree, but if you think you know what I know then you are just plain wrong.
I never suggested I have the answers,
Yes you did when you claimed to know what I know and understand. I take life over death to the bitter end no matter how bad it might be… It’s still alive and that beats dead every time in my very knowledgeable opinion.
#38
My opinion about your lack of understanding is based on your responses. Using colorful language does nothing but lead people to think that you do not in fact know what you are talking about. A typical run-of-the-mill prison is not at all the same thing as a super-max prison. Not even close. It would be like claiming you knew what life was life for people stationed at Guantanamo because you lived near a prison. I too know people that work in law enforcement and I met one that briefly worked at a super-max. He never wanted to return. He said that standard prisons are summer camps in comparison. Many prisoners go insane.
There are far worse things than death. To say that you would prefer life over execution regardless of how painful that life might be is just naive.
#39 – You think my colorful language leads people to think I don’t know what I’m talking about. Fine. But your pompous attitude leads me to know you are a jack ass.
Thanks for your subjective analysis based on your limited world experience.
#40
It was not my intention to belittle your opinion however as I read my responses, I did so and you have my apologies. I do think that you may want to do a bit more research about the actual conditions that people sentenced to life would have to endure. Both forms of punishment are barbaric.
When I stated that I did not have the answers, I was specifcally referring to the issue of dealing with and deterring people that commit heinous crimes.
In other discussions I have had on this subject, some suggested allowing the prisoner to decide (death or life in prison). If that meant decide at any time (including after they have been incarcerated) then perhaps that is not unreasonable.
Fun huh?
“Fact is” death penalty deters some people in some situations and not others in the same situation.
I once had “casual” thoughts about killing someone and what detered me was not wanting to be in jail==never even got to the death penalty question.
So, I think free floating “fear of punishment” has a broad deterent effect for most people, most of the time.
Good point #42, Since I have learned about mental illnesses, I have a different perspective on people. When someone with severe bipolar disorder is in the deepest depression, they logically conclude they want to kill themselves. It sounds strange, but if you go to this link, you will see multiple examples of it: http://bipolar.about.com/cs/selfharm/a/sfe_si_personal.htm
This is not a link for the weak at heart.
And if they don’t care about themselves, they don’t care about the law nor do they care about killing someone else. Because of this condition, they are the closest people to evil you will ever meet.
But there are times that they are totally normal and with treatment, they can be somewhat normal most of the time.
Also, because of their tendency towards suicide, some of them may WANT to be killed.
There may be some reasons for capital punishment but deterrence never has made any sense to me. That is applying a logical principle to murderers, who are in many cases, insane.
There is understandable confusion on deterrence.
Please review:
Death Penalty and Deterrence: Let’s be clear
by Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, 0104
In their story, “States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates”, The New York Times did their best to illustrate that the death penalty was not a deterrent, by showing that the average murder rate in death penalty states was higher than the average rate in non death penalty states and, it is. (1)
What the Times failed to observe is that their own study confirmed that you can’t simply compare those averages to make that determination regarding deterrence.
As one observer stated: “The Times story does nothing more than repeat the dumbest of all dumb mistakes — taking the murder rate in a traditionally high-homicide state with capital punishment (like Texas) and comparing it to a traditionally low-homicide state with no death penalty (like North Dakota) and concluding that the death penalty doesn’t work at all. Even this comparison doesn’t work so well. The Times own graph shows Texas, where murder rates were 40 percent above Michigan’s in 1991, has now fallen below Michigan . . .”. (2)
Within the Times article, Michigan Governor John Engler states, “I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago,” referring to the state’s abolition of the death penalty in 1846. “We’re pretty proud of the fact that
we don’t have the death penalty.”(3)
Even though easily observed on the Times’ own graphics, they failed to mention the obvious. Michigan’s murder rate is near or above that of 31 of the US’s 38 death penalty states. And then, it should be recognized that Washington, DC (not found within the Times study) and Detroit, Michigan, two non death penalty jurisdictions, have been perennial leaders in murder and violent crime rates for the past 30 years. Delaware, a jurisdiction similar in size to them, leads the nation in executions per murder, but has significantly lower rates of murders and violent crime than do either DC or Detroit, during that same period.
Obviously, the Times study and any other simple comparison of jurisdictions with and without the death penalty, means little, with regard to deterrence.
Also revealed within the Times study, but not pointed out by them,: “One-third of the nation’s executions take place in Texas—and the steepest decline in homicides has occurred in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas, which together account for nearly half the nation’s executions.” (4)
And, the Times also failed to mention that the major US jurisdiction with the most executions is Harris County (Houston, Texas), which has seen a 73% decrease in murder rates since resuming executions in 1982 — possibly the largest reduction for a major metropolitan area since that time.
Also omitted from the Times review, although they had the data, is that during a virtual cessation of executions, from 1966-1980, that murders more than doubled in the US. Any other rise and fall in murders, after that time, has been only a fraction of that change, indicating a strong and direct correlation between the lack of executions and the dramatic increase in murders, if that is specifically what you are looking for.
If deterrence was measured by direct correlation’s between execution, or the lack thereof, and murder rates, as implied by the Times article, and as wrongly assumed by those blindly accepting that model, then there would be no debate, only more confusion. Which may have been the Times goal.
Let’s take a look at the science.
Some non death penalty jurisdictions, such as South Africa and Mexico lead the world in murder and violent crime rates. But then some non death penalty jurisdictions, such as Sweden, have quite low rates. Then there are such death penalty jurisdictions as Japan and Singapore which have low rates of such crime. But then other death penalty jurisdictions, such as Rwanda and Louisiana, that have high rates.
To which an astute observer will respond: But socially, culturally, geographically, legally, historically and many other ways, all of those jurisdictions are very different. Exactly, a simple comparison of only execution rates and murder rates cannot tell the tale of deterrence. And within the US, between states, there exist many variables which will effect the rates of homicides.
And, as so well illustrated by the Times graphics, a non death penalty state, such as Michigan has high murder rates and another non death penalty state, such as North Dakota, has low murder rates and then there are death penalty states, such as Louisiana, with high murder rates and death penalty states, such South Dakota, with low rates. Apparently, unbeknownst to the Times, but quite obvious to any neutral observer, there are other factors at play here, not just the presence or absence of the death penalty. Most thinking folks already knew that.
As Economics Professor Ehrlich stated in the Times piece and, as accepted by all knowledgeable parties, there are many factors involved in such evaluations. That is why there is a wide variation of crime rates both within and between some death penalty and non death penalty jurisdictions, and small variations within and between others. Any direct comparison of only execution rates and only murder rates, to determine deterrence, would reflect either ignorance or deception.
Ehrlich called the Times study “a throwback to the vintage 1960s statistical analyses done by criminologists who compared murder rates in neighboring states where capital punishment was either legal or illegal.” “The statistics involved in such comparisons have long been recognized as devoid of scientific merit.” He called the Times story a “one sided affair” devoid of merit. Most interesting is that Ehrlich was interviewed by the Time’s writer, Fessenden, who asked Ehrlich to comment on the results before the story was published. Somehow Ehrlich’s overwhelming criticisms were left out of the article.
Ehrlich also referred Fessenden to some professors who produced the recently released Emory study. Emory Economics department head, Prof. Deshbakhsh “says he was contacted by Fessenden, and he indicated to the Times reporter that the study suggested a very strong deterrent effect of capital punishment.” Somehow,
Fessenden’s left that out of the Times story, as well. (5).
There is a constant within all jurisdictions — negative consequences will always have an effect on behavior.
copyright 2000-2007 Dudley Sharp
1) “States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates”, The New
York Times 9/22/00 located at http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22STUD.html andwww.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22DEAT.html
2) “Don’t Know Much About Calculus: The (New York) Times flunks high-school
math in death-penalty piece”, William Tucker, National Review, 9/22/00, located
at http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment092200c.shtml
3) ibid, see footnote 11
4) “The Death Penalty Saves Lives”, AIM Report, August 2000, located atwww.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2000/08a.html
15) “NEW YORK TIMES UNDER FIRE AGAIN”, Accuracy in Media, 10/16/00, go to http://www.aim.org/
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas